Knowledge, Attitudes, Self‐Reported Practices, and Self‐Reported Hepatitis B Vaccination Completion Among Dental Students: A Cross‐Sectional Study

BACKGROUND: Dental students are exposed to blood-borne pathogens and sharps injuries, making adherence to infection prevention and control (IPC) measures essential for their safety. This study compared IPC knowledge, attitudes, self-reported practices, and self-reported hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination completion between fourth- and fifth-year dental students. METHODS: This cross-sectional questionnaire study included separate fourth- and fifth-year dental-student cohorts at the College of Dentistry, Al-Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq. The investigator-developed, context-adapted questionnaire comprised 12 knowledge, 10 attitude, and 12 self-reported practice items. We used Mann-Whitney U and chi-squared tests for academic-year comparisons, with Holm adjustment applied to the prespecified families of KAP comparisons. RESULTS: The study included 188 participants: 95 fourth-year students (79.4% response rate) and 93 fifth-year students (77.5% response rate). Fifth-year students had higher knowledge scores than fourth-year students (median [interquartile range], 11 [10-12] vs. 9 [8-9]; Holm-adjusted p < 0.003; r = 0.70), greater knowledge adequacy (97.8% vs. 55.8%; Holm-adjusted p < 0.003), and a higher prevalence of self-reported completion of the three-dose HBV vaccination schedule (60.2% vs. 31.6%; p < 0.001; Cramer's V = 0.29). Attitude and self-reported practice scores were high in both cohorts, with comparatively smaller between-cohort differences. CONCLUSION: The two cohorts differed principally in IPC knowledge and self-reported HBV vaccination completion. Because the study was cross-sectional, the findings do not demonstrate within-student improvement or the causal effect of academic progression.